历史考证演奏源起自20世纪中、晚期的西欧,起先专于中世纪、文艺复兴与巴洛克时期的作品诠释,同样,也包含古典、早期浪漫时期,工业革命结束前,以手工制作乐器的时期。在上世纪迄今的当代音乐复兴(英语:Early music revival)思潮中,复古式的演奏是关键的一环。除了音乐领域外,复古风格演奏也开始受到剧场的注意。在巴洛克歌剧的制作与演出上,如今已有许多相关的应例[2][1]。
自文艺复兴时期始,便有许多作曲家为古提琴独奏、齐奏创作作品,包括了Diego Ortiz[译名请求]、蒙特威尔第、伯德、William Lawes[译名请求]、亨利·珀塞尔、Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe[译名请求]、巴赫、泰勒曼、马兰·马雷、Antoine Forqueray[译名请求]、Carl Frederick Abel[译名请求]等人。
Lydia Goehr[译名请求]在其著作The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music[译名请求]中,对“复古风格”的正反观点做了检讨与整理[37]:279。她主张复古风格的兴起源自19世纪下旬,随著演奏技术的进展,对早期音乐的诠释探讨也应运而生。Goehr并且将复古风格的论辩总结为两点:忠于诠释,或者忠于作品[37]:279。Goehr认为,古乐复兴运动旨在提供新的可能性:“使我们在既有的规范下找到音乐诠释的新可能。”[37]:284
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Kirkpatrick, Ralph. Interpreting Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1984. [...] too often historical authenticity can be used as a means of escape from any potentially disquieting observance of esthetic values, and from the assumption of any genuine artistic responsibility. The abdication of esthetic values and artistic responsibilities can confer a certain illusion of simplicity on what the passage of history has presented to us, bleached as white as bones on the sands of time.
Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel. Early Music, vol. 12, no. 1. What we are doing with early music is genuinely authentic to such a small degree that the word loses most of its intended meaning. 1984.2. Historical research may provide us with instruments, and sometimes even quite detailed information on how to use them; but the gap between such evidence and a sounding performance is still so great that it can be bridged only by a large amount of musicianship and invention. Exactly how much is required can easily be forgotten, precisely because the exercise of musical invention is so automatic to the performer.请检查|date=中的日期值 (帮助)
Robert Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing tastes in instrumental Performance, 1900-1950 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 239.
Taruskin, Richard. Text and Act. Last Thoughts First (New York: Oxford University Press). 1995: 5. What we had been accustomed to regard as historically authentic performances, I began to see, represented neither any determinable historical prototype nor any coherent revival of practices coeval with the repertories they addressed. Rather, they embodied a whole wish list of modern(ist) values, validated in the academy and the marketplace alike by an eclectic, opportunistic reading of historical evidence. [...] 'Historical' performers who aim 'to get to the truth'...by using period instruments and reviving lost playing techniques actually pick and choose from history's wares. And they do so in a manner that says more about the values of the late twentieth century than about those of any earlier era.
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